VIII

BUT enough of this. His hero is introduced to us  as a divine man, who assumes from birth the guise and personality of a demon of the sea. For he says that to his mother when she was about to bear her child, there appeared the figure of a demon of the sea, namely Proteus, who in the story of Homer ever changes his form. But she, in no way frightened, asked him what she would bring to birth ; and he replied: " Myself." Then she asked: " And who are you ? " " Proteus," he replied, " of Egypt." And then he writes about a certain meadow and about swans, that assisted the lady to bear her child, though without telling us whence he derived this particular ; for assuredly he does not attribute this story to Damis the Assyrian writer. But a little further on in the same history he represents Apollonius as using, in token of his being of a divine nature these very words to Damis himself: " I myself, my companion, understand all languages though I have learned none." And again he says to him : " Do not be surprised, for I know what men are thinking about, even when they are silent." And again in the temple of Asclepius he was much honoured by the god, and is said to have possessed a certain natural gift of prescience, which he did not acquire by learning, from very childhood. We learn, in a word, that he was born superior to mankind in general, and so he is described from the first moment  of his birth throughout his history. Anyhow on one occasion after he had loosed himself from his bonds, his historian adds the remark : " Then Damis declares he for the first time clearly understood the nature of Apollonius, that it was divine and superior to humanity. For without offering any sacrifice, -- for how could he offer one in the prison ? -- and without offering any prayer, without a single word, he just laughed at his fetters." And at the end of the bookl we learn that his grave was nowhere to be found on earth ; but thai he went to heaven in his physical body accompanied by hymns and dances. Naturally if he was so great as he is described in the above, he may be said "to have wooed philosophy in a more divine manner than Pythagoras, or Empedocles, or Plato." For these reasons we must surely class the man among the gods.